When rebel rousing finally came back to New York

Last October, at the Norman Mailer Center Benefit Gala in New
York, Alec Baldwin, master of ceremonies, addressed a congregation
of literary activists (including a few notable GQ contributors)
with characteristic zeal. His message appeared simple. Follow the
likes of Mailer, Muhammad Ali and Oliver Stone, and let your words
change the world. But what was he really saying?

A black-tie event in a ballroom overlooking Columbus Circle
might be an odd location for yoga but, diligently, the audience
obeyed. Coming after the first presidential debate - disastrous for
Barack Obama - Baldwin had decided to lead the audience in what he
termed a "post-debate breathing exercise". Having recently married
a yoga expert, Hilaria, he has some expertise in this area.
"Breathe in and breathe out," continued the star of 30
Rock. Pause. "And now, altogether, say... [long pause]
f***!"

Doubtless, if he were still here, Norman Mailer - who so often
sounded the siren for political catastrophe - would be expounding
the sentiment. The director Oliver Stone, presenting the Muhammad
Ali ethics award, spoke for all of Mailer's fans when he said: "It
used to be that no matter how crazy the world got, you could read
Norman Mailer," before adding, affectionately, "I miss his strong
voice... I miss dissent in our culture." In a few verbal rounds,
Mailer, you just know, would have made effortless work of Mitt
Romney. In an unforgettable description, observing the 35-year-old
Mailer at a rally in 1959, the radical writer Abbie Hoffman wrote
that he had the air of "some tousle-haired Hebraic James Dean". If
the writer - as much as the cowboy, the beatnik or that Fifties
American invention the teenager - is a particular breed of American
rebel, writing, too, is a specific, considered kind of protest and
the Gala thronged with rebels, including, in a very rare public
appearance, Muhammad Ali, Mailer's muse for his classic book
The Fight.

This year, the Norman Mailer Center united the two friends'
legacies. With the Muhammad Ali Center (his foundation and museum
in Kentucky), the Norman Mailer Center introduced the Muhammad Ali
Writing Award For Ethics. As a fragile Ali appeared on stage with
his wife Lonnie, Baldwin movingly led guests in a rendition of that
famous, spine-tingling chant of his name: "Ali! Ali!" The gala was
named "A Meeting Of Giants" after the famous picture of Ali and
Mailer in their younger years, arm wrestling. As his wife
recounted, Ali refused to box with his writer buddy. "It's a secret
who won," she said, with an eyebrow raised. Lonnie also provided
the night's best joke when discussing the similarities between the
two men: "Norman was married six times; Muhammad, having developed
a desire to stay alive... four."

It used to be that however crazy the world got, you
could read Norman Mailer. I miss his strong voice

Oliver
Stone

Looking around the room, it was an astonishing collection of
rebels and their causes. Your correspondent sat next to GQ
contributor - and scourge of News International - Michael Wolff. As
Alec Baldwin, a committed communicator of his own views on Twitter,
proclaimed: "Change the stories - change the world. There are a
number of people here who, by changing stories, have changed the
world: Muhammad Ali changed the stories we tell about sports, race,
war, economics, grace and, yes, even poetry. Oliver Stone changed
the stories we tell about war, politics and assassination. Garrison
Keillor changed the stories we tell about small-town America.
Robert Caro changed the stories we tell about our political
leaders. Joyce Carol Oates, well, Joyce Carol Oates has told so
many stories and so many stories brilliantly that she has changed
the stories we tell about tellers of stories. By fighting
censorship, Barney Rosset changed the stories we tell about what
stories we can tell."

And while swearing loudly might make us feel better, a more
expansive use of language is also where consolation can be found.
Instead of seeing literature as escapism, the work of the Norman
Mailer Writers Colony champions it as the ultimate form of
non-violent action. It's a mission central to Mailer's life as a
writer and to his legacy at the Norman Mailer Center, which,
through its prizes for emerging writers and its writing colony in
Provincetown, nurtures those who want to change the world through
stories. Language, at its most powerful, is where the fight back
truly starts. If "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" is
Ali's most famous phrase (a line of pure poetry that has entered
the cultural lexicon), then "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet
Cong... No Viet Cong ever called me nigger" is the one that changed
history. Without his refusal to fight in Vietnam, on religious
grounds and in the name of racial injustice, arguably there would
have been no The Armies Of The Night - Mailer's 1968
account of the 70,000-strong march on the Pentagon the previous
year.

Olivia Cole

GQ's Literary Editor Olivia Cole is an award-winning British poet and journalist, who has also written for the London Evening Standard and The Spectator.